What is poor quality turf?
As certifiers of quality turf, AusGAP is the assurance that the customer will receive the best quality turf. AusGAP stipulate and monitor checks on farm to ensure poor quality turf never leave the farm and ensures the customer get the best product possible. Read on to find out how to differentiate high quality turf from poor quality turf and how to avoid receiving the latter.
What is poor quality turf?
To maintain certification turf harvested must:
• Be visually free of other turf varieties (off-types), weeds, disease, and pests
• Have tensile strength: turf rolls and slabs can be picked up with two hands without separation and remain in one piece when installed
• Be cut to consistent lengths
• Be harvested within a reasonable time frame for the local climate to ensure it will not overheat during delivery
• Be harvested as green as possible
If turf does not meet these criteria, it is considered poor quality turf.
How is poor quality turf made?
The responsibility of producing high quality turf lays with every employee in the production process. Poor quality turf is accumulative result of negligence in turf production. Disregarding wash down bays for equipment when switching varieties, turf is inconsistently cut, cut too early, and not delivered in an acceptable time frame allowing turf to burn, all attribute to the production of poor-quality turf.
How to avoid poor quality turf?
Turf should not be like a burger ad, advertising a perfect product only to receive something that resembles a long distant cousin twice removed of that originally advertised burger. AusGAP ensure that when you are told you are getting quality, green, genetically pure turf, that this is what you receive. AusGAP Certified turf that has been produced under industry best practice from start to finish gives assurance that all steps along the chain are carried out in accordance with AusGAP protocols and standards alongside required state and federal legislations.
Consumer expectations should be met especially when investing in turf. The AusGAP program has many policies and procedures in place to help ensure poor quality turf is a thing of the past for those producing certified turf. Certified turf is the only way to be sure that what you order is going to be what you receive. With policies and procedures in place for the preplanting, production, harvesting, and delivery of certified turf, poor quality turf is no longer an option for consumers.
